Lina Viste Grønli at Gaudel de Stampa

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Gaudel de Stampa, Paris

Press Release:

Lakoff (1973): (1) Be clear, (2) Be polite; (or whatever).

In Lina Viste Grønli’s second solo show at Gaudel de Stampa her focus turns again towards abstraction, linguistic and semantic interpretations, and the deconstruction of language as a narrative form.

Here, she has chosen a pyramid-shaped equilateral triangle as a symbolic representation of the word Feminism. The triangles have been meticulously framed, formally miming or hinting at the (predominently male) Minimalist work of the 1960’s, but at the same time opposing it with the radical features of the triangle, as well as the personal / political content it contains.

Her overall intent lies in experience and transmission of language, the ambiguity of words and phrases, and the way in which context contributes to meaning.

As defined in linguistics, a sentence is an abstract entity — a string of words divorced from nonlinguistic context — as opposed to an utterance, which is a concrete example of a speech act in a specific context. The closer conscious subjects stick to common words, idioms, phrasings, and topics, the more easily others can surmise their meaning; the further they stray from common expressions and topics, the wider the variations in interpretations.

The transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge (e.g. grammar, lexicon etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker.

Lina Viste Grønli, b.1976 in Bergen, Norway, lives and works in Brussels. Venues where Lina Viste Grønli has exhibited include Henie Onstad Art Centre, Oslo, Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo, Performa09, New York, NY, USA, Art Since the Summer of 69, New York, and Triangle France, Marseille. Grønli is currently a resident at Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels where she will hold a solo presentation January 2011